Site Down/Restored/Migrated

[Andrew Davie]

Hi All
My domain host renewal was due, and on review I thought US$200 was too much to be paying for what *I* use it for and so I was looking at alternates. I found out that if I shifted the hosting from Hong Kong to the USA I could halve that (to US$96 to be exact). The process was a bit more complex than just deciding - first I tried to delete files on the host which were unimportant/unused -- but it turns out that the cheapest (economy) option has a 10 GiB limit, and the NBTV forum by itself uses over 21 GiB of data. So that was out. But in the process I somehow accidentally deleted the whole forum.
Having said that, there was a backup from before I hacked at it, this very day, so the damage should be minimal.
If you were trying to access for 2-3 hours, and couldn't -- well now you know what happened. I do apologise to anyone who has lost a post in the past few hours; this is most unlikely, but possible I guess. I have done the best I can, given that I don't really want to be paying so much for hosting. I think I've found the right balance here, and hopefully everything is back to "normal". I will be interested in hearing about peoples' views on the speed difference, because for me the USA server is a LOT slower... but I imagine for people in the USA there may be some speed improvement in the site/forum. C'est la vie, I'm afraid.

[Steve Anderson]

Hi All
My domain host renewal was due, and on review I thought US$200 was too much to be paying for what *I* use it for and so I was looking at alternates. I have done the best I can, given that I don't really want to be paying so much for hosting.

Andrew, I think that most who still visit this forum will express gratitude for your generosity over the past 16 or so years in singularly funding this forum. At US$200 (per annum I assume) It comes as no surprise that you are looking to reduce or eliminate that burden. I certainly would be!

Given the quite obvious reduction of postings and those making those posts I would be certainly looking to others either to continue matters here much as they are, and/or migrate somehow to an alternative. Exactly what and how I don't know, I'm not really that knowledgeable in these matters.

This subject was discussed a few years past and has now resurfaced, it's time for those who would like to see this continue, or something similar, to make themselves heard....(count me in).

How to carry this forward is open for debate....but it does need addressing, and soon.

Steve A.

As for the speed, I'm not that far from Hong Kong where I believe the Taswegian site is hosted, so I probably have the fasted connection of anyone here! Aside from some 'hiccups' a few years ago I find the speed no different to a site hosted here in Bangkok...more than fast enough whatever...

[Steve Anderson]

I have been considering for quite some time (years) in setting up a website/forum of my own. It primarily would be concerned with a wide spread of my electronics interests which of course includes NBTV, but not exclusively. It would be quite possible to include a NBTV section organised much as this one is. I would use the same PHP forum software as it's already familiar to not only myself, but all that participate in this forum, even 'lurkers'. Though just 'kicking the thing off' would require quite a steep learning curve on my part.

So far, so good. Next is to find a reasonably priced hosting service. Free versions are too small now this forum has grown to some 20GB, plus the other items I may add would exceed most, if not all, free hosting. In addition there's the pesky advertising! And free hosting isn't what I would call 'professional'.

Today I would like to base this in the UK or Europe as that's where the majority of the traffic would probably come from, and closer to the US than Hong Kong. Sorry for those in Australia and New Zealand! Though with internet speeds as they are today there's probably little difference....

...I'm 'thinking aloud' here, it's not a certainty, and due to its Euro-centric nature maybe better hosted and managed from the UK/Europe.

However, with the drop-off in postings in recent times I wonder if the subject matter has ran its course? Contentious? Maybe.

Your thoughts gents?

Steve A.

[Harry Dalek]

I can understand the problem Andrew as now and the past always grateful for the forum and your generosity hosting it .
Chatting to Steve i had a look what's going on i missed the site down times so didn't know that happened till i read your post .
I find the site fast changing pages all good in Melbourne !

[Klaas Robers]

Thanks Andrew for this forum. And of course when your host raises the price, you are looking around for a cheaper host. I don't know the effort it took you to move all the contents to the new host.
The websites I have are small, less than 2 GB, and I made them directly in HTML. That includes that I have an image here at home on my laptop. Then moving is very simple, just upload all pages.

I got the impression that going to the forum, so calling the first page became faster here in NL. The remaining pages are as fast as they were, once the path is opened it can be fast over the glass fiber to our home. No waiting at all. We will see in how far this remains.

Regards, Klaas PA0KLS

[acl]

Hi Andrew,

Would it be possible to archive and restart and offer full forum for the cost of suitable drive plus postage? I have explored the possibility of merging with NBTV host but is would be too costly.

See attached.

Regards Chris Lewis

[Andrew Davie]

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. To clarify, I moved the hosting to the USA. If anything, it seems quicker for me. I am using the same host company; highly highly highly highly recommended - response time to enquiries/problems is less than 2 minutes, day or night. And they fix things. So really you couldn't find a better host anywhere, ever. The price was US$200 for HK host but surprisingly for exactly the same bandwidth/storage it's US$96 from USA. So I switched directly. As to how hard that turned out to be - they did all of that for me, in the end I didn't need to lift a finger other than pointing the domain to the new host address.

So, there are a number of issues. Chris - you posted some specs but remember this forum has over 20 GiB of images/data. That's 20,000 MiB... and your page there shows they charge EUR500 p.a for only 5,000 MiB. So that one's out

I'm happy to keep paying for the hosting - the announcement was to point out that the site was moving to USA and to explain any downtime/issues.

There is one other problem, though -- and that is that this forum is "stuck" on an old version of the software (phpBB). There is no migration path that's easily obvious to me. So although I can (and do occasionally) make backups of the whole thing -- there's no easy way to get up and running elsewhere with a replacement. You'd be hard-pressed to install the old forum software, and migration would be a huge pain. There is, I'm sure, some way to get updated to the new forum software... but I simply don't have the time/inclination to do it. I hate software installs.

And why not stick with the old version? Because it's prone to hacking/exploits. Sometime, sooner rather than later, someone's going to hack this forum and there will be little we can do about it.

I am happy to put zip/archive files of the full forum up for people to download their own copies. But it's a database of course and not really in an easily accessible format. Some investigatory work would be required. Although we may not have much activity these days (understandable), I consider the contents quite historically valuable - years of contributions by very smart and knowledgeable people. It would be a shame to see it disappear from online.

[Andrew Davie]

If you are considering your own website, and would like to indirectly help with the cost of this one.... then trust my highest recommendation for ICDSoft https://www.icdsoft.com/c/0706764883. I've been with them for 18 years or more. Basic web hosting $2/month for first year. The URL given will channel a kickback to my own hosting account fees. If you don't wanna give me a kickback, use them anyway... here's the direct link to the basic hosting plan page... https://www.icdsoft.com/en/hosting/shared

[Harry Dalek]

Well i hate change Andrew and so the old software is fine with me
As far as loosing all the information on this site if it ever go's that would be dreadful ! i know nothing lasts for ever but it could out live us all /
The worst case if we do loose you Andrew there is the way back machine web site
A digital library of Internet sites only problem with it is you need to know the old web site address well so far that's the case and the forum has been grabbed a few times over the years .
if any thing its at least been copied saved for the future and i would think be some where when we are no longer here ,but its not perfect the early grabs just show title page but better these days.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000 ... /index.php
I rather a working forum this is more interesting than a dead one we can only review and read